Tascam 238 noise issues!

B

Bobby_Stills

New member
I have been using a Tascam 238 Syncaset recorder for a few months now with no issues. I bought it and it seems in relatively good shape- no signs of wear on the tape heads, etc.

Lately, I've been having issues with recording- i.e. lots of noise in mid to high frequency sounds. This comes across as intermittent 'bumpiness' 'roughness' in the recorded signal.

Can't seem to narrow this down to an issue with the tapes, heads, etc. Have cleaned the heads, tried different tapes, problem still occurs.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
 
Bobby.......we're probably going to need more detail as to your signal chain and it's components........and a sample of the noise problem.
 
Yes that would help.

Also, when was the last time you degaussed your tape path, and what make/model degaussed do you use?
 
sweetbeats said:
Yes that would help.

Also, when was the last time you degaussed your tape path, and what make/model degaussed do you use?
Click to expand...

My thought as well and note, there is a technique to using one, get it wrong and you can make matters worse.

Dave.
 
Clean the heads and guides and plug an instrument directly into each channel and and output to a speaker and test them out and see what kind of response you get. These machines are unbalanced RCA I/Os at -10b and can be recorded directly in without mixer in-between. Your signal path probably is the problem. I'd watch a video on YouTube about demagnetizing the heads and be slow and careful. It's hard to know with the 238 as you are cramming tracks onto a unbelievably small amount of space on the 1/8" tape. With DBX it should be fairly quiet with direct in recordings. But if you cram 8 or more tracks on a cassette I wouldn't expect the quietest outcome no matter how new the heads are
 
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